Towards European fascism

The ruling against Marine Le Pen reveals a serious crisis of democracy

by Roland Hureaux,* France

(16 May 2025) The extravagant punishment imposed by the Paris Court of Appeal on Marine Le Pen and forty other members of the “Rassemblement National” is an insult to democracy that has shocked people far beyond this political family and our borders.

If the initiators of this case had wanted to propel the Rassemblement National (RN) candidate to more than 50% of the vote in the next elections, they could not have done better.

To ban a candidate who is none other than the leader of the main opposition party and who has twice reached the second round of the presidential elections from the political arena for a trivial reason is evidence of a serious deterioration in political morals in our country.

This trial makes no sense in terms of content, as the work of a parliamentary attaché is exactly the same as that of a party administrator. Under different legal designations, both fulfil the same function, namely ensuring the logistics of a politician to support them in their difficult tasks: documentation, drafting notes, articles, speeches, organising meetings and trips. The distinction between the two is therefore completely artificial. At most, one could argue that there was an administrative error, but not a serious criminal offence.

Regardless of the legal arguments against Marine Le Pen, the trial is pointless in terms of content. It is shocking that the ill-informed public can imagine heinous acts that did not take place. When the court hears about embezzlement of public funds, it imagines that this was for her personal gain; however, this is not the case at all. Political parties enshrined in the constitution remain a public institution. The desire to discredit an opponent of the system is clear. Especially since all party leaders, starting with François Bayrou, the current Prime Minister, risked the same punishment and only Marine Le Pen was punished.

Equally shocking is the provisional (and therefore immediate) enforcement in a case involving politics, which is nonsense. This procedure does not, of course, apply to this type of offence, where the risk of immediate repetition is zero.

In the present case, the political consequences are serious, as the president of the “Rassemblement National” will be excluded from the next presidential elections.

Clearly, this decision is in line with those taken by Călin Georgescu in Romania: annulment of the election in which he came first and ineligibility without serious grounds, as well as the attempted assassination of the Slovak Prime Minister.1

These practices are in line with the increase in opinion trials, censorship, forced media uniformity and the enforcement of a single mindset in all areas, which normally runs counter to the aspirations of the peoples.

The French judges are not acting on the orders of the European Commission, but both are subject to the same ideology. The European Parliament initiated the proceedings. For the Italian Salvini, the decision is “a declaration of war by Brussels”. This means that the plan has been fulfilled. The case “Marine Le Pen” is part of a very disturbing development, namely the rise – to put it bluntly – of European fascism.

As I have already pointed out in one of my previous books,2 the European project has the intellectual character of an ideology, like communism or fascism, albeit less brutal so far. It lays down principles, in this case the project of gradually transforming Western Europe into a single state, and derives all the consequences from this a priori, without considering the aspirations of the real peoples and what should be at the heart of any politics: the defence of a particular human community.

Every ideology leads to the gradual abolition of democracy and freedom. We have reached that point. Former Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said it openly: “There must be no democratic decision against the European treaties.”

The RN now has every legitimacy to take up the banner of defending authentic democratic values and to demand a radical reform of the French judiciary.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office for Financial Matters was set up to combat serious financial crime. There is no sign that it is doing so. Insiders know, for example, that French banks were involved in gigantic money laundering operations. What is the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Financial Matters doing? We have already seen it at work in the François Fillon affair, which paved the way for the election of the current president.

Given its composition and practices, the Financial Prosecutor’s Office is clearly a highly political jurisdiction that no longer has anything to do with justice. Jean-Louis Borloo said that the incumbent president could use this instrument to get rid of any rival. It is obvious that we are dealing with a real abuse of process in this case.

If an appeal ruling is not issued soon to overturn the 31 March verdict, we will be faced with a serious crisis of European democracy.

* Roland Hureaux, born 1948, is a graduant of the Ecole normale supérieure (ENS) in Paris and the Ecole nationale d'administration (ENA) and a qualified historian. He has been politically active at various levels and has published numerous essays on political, economic and social issues, including Les Hauteurs béantes de l’Europe (Guibert), “La Grande demolition” (Buchet-Chastel), “D’une crise à l’autre” (Perspectives libres) and “Le grand Reset n’aura pas lieu” (L’Harmattan).

(Translation “Swiss-Standpoint”)

1 In this context, two African presidents and one Haitian who refused to be vaccinated against Covid were assassinated. Another African was the target of a coup attempt. The management of the Covid-19 pandemic was in the hands of the same Euro-globalist sphere, and Brussels was the main distribution centre for vaccines in Africa.

2 Roland Hureaux. “Les hauteurs béantes de l’Europe” (The gaping heights of Europe), Guibert 2000.